the american "dream"

i've been reading nickel and dimed by barbara ehrenreich - it's a book about her attempt to live as a slave wager in america and seeing how people actually manage to get by

her basic conclusion is you don't - you would need at least two jobs to get ahead and the main reason is the cost of housing; in her conclusion/evaluation at the end of the book she questions why people don't just look for a better paying job if they're stuck in a shit job

it comes down to dealing with the devil you know versus the one you don't, transportation issues, and finding the time to seek out a new job, drug testing, applications, and interviews

once you're stuck in a place it is really hard to leave - the human mind has an incredible yet self defeating mechanism to deal with misery and accepting a bad situation; it's similar to a woman that's being beaten by her husband/boyfriend yet does not leave

those that live at the bottom in north america have it hard and this book helped me understand just a little bit what it is like

but the ironic thing was in one of her "exit" interviews/discussions with her fellow employees she asks what that person wants in life and they fall into the trap of wanting the fancy things that they see rich people have; they buy into the myth of western civilization - that we can all be rich and enjoy a nice life; so many of those automatons out there realize that somebody cleans the building you work in, serves you your food, builds your widgets, takes care of your children and most of these people get paid peanuts

i'll leave that rant for another time although i would suggest reading anything on the myth of progress including ronald wright's a short history of progress

bumper sticker

saw a bumper sticker on the weekend that somehow sticks in my head


"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish. "

-Mother Teresa


it makes me stop to think each time i stop to buy something and i am trying my best to reduce my footprint each and every day

compact fluorescent bulbs

so i'm looking at a compact fluorescent bulb and i see "Hg" written on it and think "isn't that mercury"

great, i'm using less energy but now i've got a hazardous material to deal with at the end of the bulb's life cycle; then i'll have to find a place that will recycle this bulb

sure, if you're getting your electricity from a coal fired plant less mercury is released into the environment because the CFL uses less energy overall versus an incandescent but how about those of us that get nuclear or hydroelectric power?

being environmentally aware is a difficult matter as you try to do the right thing in one aspect (global warming) but could do harm in another (toxic pollution)

car sharing

today i bring my thoughts around to car sharing and its implementation in the lower mainland

my family owns two vehicles due mainly to the fact that my wife and i owned separate vehicles when we met along with the fact that sometimes we both have need of a vehicle

however, one of them is not used much of the time and i would be willing to allow else the use of that vehicle if i could be compensated

the idea would be to have a central registry of vehicles and locations for individuals to use but the implementation of such an organization is beyond my ken - computer logging, fees, GPS tracking of vehicles, liability, insurance

the idea would be like FlexCar or Car Co-op (a.k.a. CAN) but without the capital cost of maintaining a fleet of cars - it would be a pool of cars that individual owners would allow the use of by others

i guess i can talk to the CAN about options for the lower mainland, or at least the logistics of vehicle tracking and insurance issues

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came across the Sightline Institute website today - akin to the Tyee website

word of the day and other thoughts

the word Bildungsroman (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman)

a novel that follows the protagonist from child to man/woman

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so i recently watched why we fight, a documentary by Eugene Jarecki so i did some searching for articles and such on the topic of military industrial complex, eisenhower, the war machine which led me to the book...

Why we fight: moral clarity and the war on terrorism by William Bennett

...which supports the post 9/11 war efforts and puts down those that opposed a violent response (this i gathered from a review i read about the book)...note that this was written in 2002 so i'm going to see if William Bennett has done anything more recently on the issue of 9/11 and iraq

today's thought

nigeria, oil, american imperialism, privatized water, energy demands

there are some of the words that have crossed my eyes today

what does it mean? it means that the world i was born into is a lot different than the one i'm living in...or is it?

the myth of progress and the faith in science/technology was there when i was born, it's just that the failure of that myth and faith is coming to fruition

not everyone can be rich and the planet cannot support the way we in the west live

my biggest worry is that billions will die in the coming storm and no one likes to die...